Are You a Confident or Overconfident Boss? Here's How to Tell

Bosses who are overconfident breed arrogance, which can estrange employees, customers, and other stakeholders, reports the Wall Street Journal . To assess whether they have fallen prey to this tendency, employers should ask how much time they actually spend listening to employees. One helpful suggestion is to record team meetings several times each quarter, and then watch the recording to see whether they are doing most of the talking. If so, the boss should make a practice of giving others more airtime. A second factor is whether most ideas come from the boss, which can be rated by gathering the team together to perform a "creative audit" on a quarterly or annual basis. Should this signify overconfidence, the boss ought to appoint a team member to play the role of devil's advocate in meetings when the team discusses key decisions. Bosses who often feel like they are the smartest person are advised to give themselves 10 minutes at the end of the workday to consider their mental reaction to new ideas, criticism, and inconvenient facts; if this suggests less open-mindedness, bosses should strive to correct this behavior. Finally, those who consider themselves indispensable to the company's success may be misguided, and one remedy is to give other team members credit and recognition for idea generation and business milestones.